Home ownership rate in Mayo at seventy five per cent

By Colm Gannon Mayo Advertiser, Fri, Apr 21, 2017

Mayo has a home ownership rate of 75 per cent according to the latest figures released by the Central Statistics Office following the Census taken last year, while 22.9 per cent of all households in the county were in rented accommodation. The figures show that the home ownership rate in the county is almost 10 per cent higher in Mayo than nationally, with the home ownership rate in the country being 67.6 per cent and 70.8 per cent in Connacht. The 11,166 households in rented accommodation in Mayo was just under seven per cent less than the national figure of 29.3 per cent and 3.6 per cent lower than the figure for the whole of Connacht.

In total there were 48,745 permanent households recorded in Mayo, an increase on the 2011 figure which was 47,932, a 1.7 per cent rise. The rate of increase at 1.7 per cent was considerably slower than the 2006-2011 rate of 10.9 per cent. The number of permanent households with a mortgage or home loan in Mayo stood at 13,762, a decrease from a figure of 15,000 recorded five years previously.

In Mayo, 11,166 households were in rental accommodation in 2016, compared with 10,610 in 2011. The average weekly rent paid to private landlords was €116.94, a decline on the 2011 figure which was €120.21. The average weekly rent paid to the local authority in the county did go up from €54.57 in 2011 to €59.24 in 2016.

The county also had 15,452 vacant dwellings the Census found, down from 16,230 in 2011, with 9,263 of those being vacant houses, 1,334 being vacant apartments, and 4,855 being holiday homes, to give the county a vacancy rate of 23.4 per cent.

When it came to apartments there were 1,932 counted in the Census in Mayo, which was 3.96 per cent of the occupied households in the county, when compared to the figures overall that was significantly lower than nationally where the figure was 11.8 per cent, and 6.8 per cent in Connacht.

Also the Census found that home ownership overtakes renting in Mayo at the age of 34. Nationally, by the age of 35, more people own their own home than rent, compared with age 32 in 2011. Given that this age was 24 in 1991, this shows a clear long term trend. The home ownership rate for Mayo was 75 per cent, compared with 76.6 per cent in 2011.

The data comes from the first thematic report from Census 2016, Profile 1 Housing in Ireland. The results show that a total of 2,003,645 houses and apartments in the State were enumerated in the 2016 Census. Of these, 1,697,665 were occupied by persons usually resident in the State. There were 183,312 vacant houses and apartments, while the census also counted 62,148 vacant holiday homes nationally.